Israel should take note: the weight of opinion is turning against it
Jonathan Freedland

Thanks in part to a global focus more intense than on any other conflict, western attitudes to the Middle East may be shifting

Fri 21 May 2021 16.10 BST

It’s not over, because it’s never over. But there is at least the hope of a pause. After less than a fortnight in which nearly 250 people have been killed, both Hamas and Israel agreed late on Thursday to hold their fire, each crafting a victory story to tell the world and themselves.

For Hamas, the narrative is simple enough. Despite being caged in a tiny terrain, and with a fraction of their foe’s resources, they managed to surprise the enemy and strike at its civilian heart. They unleashed a torrent of missiles, more sophisticated than before, some of them breaching Israel’s Iron Dome defence system and landing not only on Israel’s peripheral towns but also its central city of Tel Aviv. It can claim, ahead of its Fatah rivals in the West Bank, to be the guardian of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. What’s more, it watched with satisfaction as a hole was ripped in Israel’s social fabric, with the country’s Jewish and Arab citizens attacking each other on streets they once shared.

For Israel, the generals are briefing that Operation Guardian of the Walls degraded Hamas’s military capacity, that most of those it killed were Hamas fighters, and that more has been done in the last 10 days than the equivalent offensives of 2009, 2012 and 2014 combined.

But they’re not fooling anyone. Israel knows that it has endured a strategic disaster, the “most failed and pointless border war” in its history, according to Haaretz’s editor, Aluf Benn. It did not see the Hamas attack coming and its vulnerability under fire will have been noted by Hezbollah to the north, which holds a much more powerful arsenal than Hamas’s, and by Hezbollah’s patron in Tehran.

Still, the bigger failings predate and go beyond this latest eruption. Israel told itself all was quiet on the Gaza front. More than that, it thought it had stilled the Palestinian issue altogether, convinced that its “Abraham accords” with Gulf states and others had made the Palestinians all but irrelevant. It has now seen the folly of that delusion.

Which points to the other strategic danger for Israel. It could yet prove ephemeral; the international attention span is short, people might soon scroll on to the next big thing. But plenty of credible observers wonder if a turning point was reached this last fortnight in the way the Israel/Palestine conflict is seen around the world and especially in the west. For a loud and influential segment of opinion, it is being reframed not as a national conflict of competing claims, but as a straightforward matter of racial justice. Note the placards at last weekend’s demonstration in London: Palestine Can’t Breathe and Palestinian Lives Matter.

Framed that way, #FreePalestine could be on its way to joining #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter as an issue that a global generation regards as of paramount importance, championed not just by politicians but by the leading lights of popular culture, from footballers to singers to fashion influencers with millions of followers. The intercommunal clashes between Jews and Arabs inside Israel reinforce that reading, with incidents of police brutality or discrimination in the criminal justice system that seem to map neatly on to the BLM template.

Those with a strong connection to Israel scratch their heads at this, wondering why, of all the appalling things going on in the world, this is the one that cuts through – bringing huge crowds on to the streets of European capitals, filling up social media timelines. They note that people who have barely stirred at the detention of a million Uyghur Muslims in China; who have not so much as “liked” a tweet about the tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims murdered by Myanmar; who rarely get agitated by the 200,000 civilians butchered by the Assad regime in Syria or by the 130,000 killed in Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen; and who might be wholly unaware of the 52,000 estimated to have been killed in the Ethiopian-Tigray conflict since November, have nevertheless been filled with fury by events in Gaza.

Much of the explanation is that Israel/Palestine is simply more visible ...

Israel did not win the war on Gaza ... Israel should take note: the weight of opinion is turning against it

As usual Hamas won the PR war by using women and children as human shields to elicit the reaction from the western lefties and continue to stoke anti semitism.

The losers of course are the Palestinian people who are held captive to religious wing nuts whose only goal is the genocide of Jews.

Racist anti semites like Aussie and his pet gimp support a group who openly support genocide.

NorthOfNorth wrote on May 26^th, 2021 at 6:08pm:


They won the PR war with Western lefties who don't get one group indiscriminately fires rockets into populated areas while using women and children as human shields while the other side warns civilians to leave an area before they target terrorists.

The tide is turning in favor of Palestinians as exemplified by worldwide demonstrations of support for Palestinians.

Below is a photo of a mass march in Los Angeles.

Israel has a secret weapon.

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 26^th, 2021 at 8:35pm:



Hi LTYC,

you're not an anti-Semite are you?

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 26^th, 2021 at 11:11pm:


OK - write some pro Jewish statements.   

The tide is turning in favor of Palestinians as exemplified by worldwide demonstrations of support for Palestinians.

Below is a photo of a mass march in Los Angeles.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/210525110849-los-angeles-pro-palestinian-...

How about -

I'd like to kiss a whole row of Jewish bums?

Frank wrote on May 26^th, 2021 at 9:32pm:


Yes, it does.

Commonsense [and virtue],   vs.  a blind, cruel, and 'self-serving' hatred - of his brother and sister.

The     collective intellect     of the leadership of Hamas, Taliban, Hezbollah, Iran's mullah's, Boko Haram, etc [inspired by the    incoherent    pronouncements contained within the Koran, and ISLAMIC 'holy' texts],
vs.
the influence upon individual Israelis, of the wisdom contained within the Tanakh [the Hebrew Bible].

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 27^th, 2021 at 12:42am:



It's what you want to do -  Buddy.   

People who support genocidal maniacs

The charter states that "our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious" and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[3] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel

... Tens of thousands of people, from the US to the UK, France, Germany and New Zealand have protested Israeli attacks; some American Democratic lawmakers have urged US President Joe Biden to force Israel to stop its latest aggression.

"Palestine has gained more international solidarity than ever recorded in its modern history; even mainstream media voices are now openly daring to say that 'Palestine has the right to defend itself,'" says Baroud.

"This historic shift in narratives will have massive consequences for Palestinian freedom in the future," he adds.

Under immense international pressure, Israel’s embattled hardliner Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to accept a ceasefire last night.

“Palestinians and the millions who support their struggle will dismantle the Israeli Apartheid regime in Palestine. Palestinians inside and outside Palestine believe more than ever that freedom from occupation, return to their historical land, and dismantlement of the Israeli Apartheid system will be realized,” Arian concludes. ... 

Human Rights Council meetin on Israeli human rights violations is live on Al Jazeera now.

Bobby. wrote on May 27^th, 2021 at 6:48pm:


Confess you are a Gordonite Bobby.

Human Rights Council meeting on Israeli human rights violations is live on Al Jazeera now.

The Binding Charter of the Current Government of the Palestinian Authority Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas

2. However, to understand events in Gaza (and beyond) there is an urgent need to consider the implications of the 1988 Charter of Hamas – available on the net – since Hamas is the legally elected Government of the Palestinian Authority. 1

3. We have been alerting the Commission about the dangers of this binding Charter since January 1989. 2

4. Regarding peace, its Article 13 is totally negative: “ Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. (…) There is no solution to the Palestinian question except by Jihad. All initiatives, proposals, and International Conferences are a waste of time and vain endeavours .”

5. Religious hatred of Jews (not only of Israel) is expressed by a hadith or ‘saying’ that concludes Article 7:

“ The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews) when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say: O Muslims (…) there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. “ Only the gharkad tree [evidently a certain kind of tree] would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (this hadith , quoted from al-Bukhari and Muslim, both considered as highly reliable sources for the hadith or ‘sayings’ of the Prophet Muhammad).



6. Article 8, the slogan of the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas (widely quoted by clerics and others) is a blueprint for jihadist terrorism: “ Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its Constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes .” 3



7. Article 28 widens the circle of hate to include all Jews: “ Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep .’” The Charter in its preface quotes Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, as saying: “ Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it .”


10. The CONCLUSION has a subheading: The Islamic Resistance Movement is Composed of Soldiers

under which article 36 states, inter alia , that the Islamic Resistance Movement “ will only serve as a support for all groupings and organizations operating against the Zionist enemy and its lackeys (…) “ The Islamic Resistance Movement adopts Islam as its way of life. Islam is its creed and religion. Whoever takes Islam as his way of life, be it an organization, a grouping, a country or any other body, the Islamic Resistance Movement considers itself as their soldiers and nothing more .”



https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-182893/

Which points to the need for an international institution capable of upholding an international rules-based system. since people who support genocidal maniacs exist on both sides of the argument.

The greater visibility that Islam's agenda has obtained in the west in the last two decades has definitely turned the opinion in favour of Israel. People have stopped assuming it is Israel's fault merely because they always win. People could not comprehend losers picking the same fight over and over again, and losing over and over again, until they met Islam. Now it all makes sense.

NorthOfNorth wrote on May 28^th, 2021 at 8:40am:



I'm as "serious and naive" as 'Doc' Evatt, former High Court Judge of Australia who along with many smaller nations resisted the enforced adoption of the UNSC veto in 1946. (btw Evatt also supported the creation the modern State of Israel).

Quote:


Trouble is everyone ignores UN rulings, for the reason I already outlined...which you term naive, based on your  delusional "individual rights/individual sovereignty" ideology, which doesn't exist in nature.

China is super-sensitive about the S. China sea because the US inisists on sailing its warships through the Taiwan Strait and arming Taiwan. Remember the US' reaction to Soviet presence in Cuba?   

And it's only recently the democracy ideologues in Taiwan have decided they are no longer the rightful rulers of China.

Guess what, it's not their decision to decide who is the rightful government of China.

Tell us more about your little fantasy of the world turning against the Jews.

The term anti-semite is meaningless when both side are semitic.

NorthOfNorth wrote on May 26^th, 2021 at 6:08pm:


Actually they're not. The majority of Israeli Jews are descendants of a Turkic people, from a land once called Kharazia.

This is why many of them - Netanyahu is a prime example - appear to be more European than Middle Eastern.

Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe talks about this at length.

Most Jews outside the Middle East are converts

People cannot accept the acts of genocide, murder, and extensive, brutal, human rights violations by Israel.

Even the Arab Israelis are rising against oppression.

Bertie wrote on May 30^th, 2021 at 10:32pm:


People cannot accept the acts of genocide, murder, and extensive, brutal, human rights violations by Israel.

Even the Arab Israelis are rising against oppression.

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 30^th, 2021 at 11:26pm:

None of this is happening, obviously. No genocide, murder, brutal human right violations by Israel.

Cant say the same about many of the enemies of Israel.

You tell us.

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 31^st, 2021 at 12:07pm:

Spot brought it up, he should tell us about it. I can't explain what he is thinking.
Can you?

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 30^th, 2021 at 2:13pm:



LTYC can sum up 5,000 years of history
in a couple of short lines.